Thread: Vatican suggest excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers

The Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, calls for a 'harsh deterrent' to the drug violence that left more than 5,000 dead last year.

By Tracy Wilkinson
January 13, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City -- Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.

But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged.

Mexico Under Siege

Speaking to Latin American journalists at the Vatican before traveling to Mexico on Monday, Bertone said it was a "duty" to fight drug gangs because their actions represent "the most hypocritical and terrible way of murdering the dignity and personality of today's youth."

"Certainly, excommunication is a very harsh deterrent that the church has used to deal with the most serious crimes in its history, from the very first centuries," Bertone said when asked if the censure would be appropriate. Excommunication bars a Catholic from receiving sacraments and participating in public worship.

"But I should observe that excommunication is a punishment that touches only those who have some form of ecclesiastical conscience, an ecclesiastical education," he added.

The Vatican, Bertone said, is alarmed at the "disasters" of drug-fueled violence, kidnappings and generalized insecurity in Mexico and, increasingly, in some of its Central American neighbors. He called on Catholics to pray for traffickers to have a change of heart.

Bertone -- whose official title is Vatican secretary of state, making him a kind of prime minister to Pope Benedict XVI -- will be in Mexico for the sixth World Meeting of Families, a church conference that starts this week. His comments were published in Mexican newspapers Monday.

Within the "narco-culture" that surrounds the drug trade here, gangsters make use of a blend of Catholic observance mixed with superstition and their own iconography. For example, many revere the so-called saint of the narco- traffickers, a Robin Hood-type character named Jesus Malverde.

President Felipe Calderon launched the Mexican army a little over two years ago in a nationwide offensive against powerful and well-armed drug gangs. Rather than pacify the country, the conflict has only increased the bloodshed. More than 5,000 people were killed last year alone.

Officially, the church hierarchy in Mexico has been supportive of the government campaign while also urging dialogue and an end to violence. In some parts of the country, however, priests have been willing to accept money from local drug lords to pay for church repairs or other community projects.

"They are very generous with the societies of their towns," Bishop Carlos Aguiar Retes, president of the Mexican Bishops Conference, said in April, according to the newspaper Reforma. In some remote towns, he said, "they put up lights, communications, roads, at their own expense. . . . Often they also build a church or a chapel."

The remarks outraged many Mexicans, and church officials later said the bishop was taken out of context. But human rights activists have long complained of complacency by many priests.

"There are seminaries, churches, who accept money not knowing where it came from," Mercedes Murillo, president of the Sinaloan Civic Front in the city of Culiacan, a major drug-trafficking center, said in a recent interview. "They wash their hands like Pontius Pilate."

wilkinson@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 9152.story

Like the drug trafficers care! I say lets advertise that the Vatican needs laborers. Let the illegals go there. Let the Church pay for their babies,health care and education. Sounds good to me!

I'm not sure that people who will cut some one's head off and dump the body in the street will really care if they are thrown out of the catholic church.

Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers

ROFLMAO

Dixie

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

I'm not sure that people who will cut some one's head off and dump the body in the street will really care if they are thrown out of the catholic church.

I am sorry ... I am trying not to laugh but I cant help it ... It's just the way the Vatican thinks and you hit the nail on the head

There is a special place in Hell for what these criminals have done and continue to do

Cartels not putting anything in the collection basket?

Why not excommunicate illegal aliens?

Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers

That is so pathetic. It's like swatting a bear with a rolled up newspaper.

pleeease, is this chruch for real! maybe they should do that with their child molestors...they have alittle more control in that area.

Let's start with Vicente Fox, and Calderon...both of whom have neglected their duties as leaders of Mexico and encouraged millions of their underclass to flee their nation...so they wouldn't have to spend $ on schools, health care and providing economic opportunities for the masses that they have such disdain for...and in return they receive 25 billion dollars a year in remittances.